The first week was a smorgasbord of introductory material -- a little biology, a little mathematics, a little on algorithms -- with a talk by Robert Gilmour from Cornell. Gilmour works on the underlying cellular mechanisms that cause heart rhythm disorders, and gave a lecture on cardiac electrophysiology and the issues raised for modeling cardiac electrophysiology.

Flavio Fenton from Georgia Tech presented much of the material during the second week, with assists from Fred von Stein, who put together the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction demonstration, and Elizabeth Cherry, who gave a great discussion of the TNNP model. . Dr. Fenton also demonstrated his work on atrial fibrillation by demonstrating the effects of electrical stimulation on students' hands. You can see some animations he has prepared to explain problems in atrial fibrillation at The Virtual Heart.

The projects start on Friday, January 18, to be completed during the third week, which will end with student presentations and a talk by Bard Ermentrout from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ermentrout recently wrote the text "Mathematical Foundations of Neuroscience," which covers most of the mathematical techniques used to explain electrical activity in the heart.

The Lehman College Workshops on Computational Modeling of Complex Systems are held each January. They are part of an NSF-funded Expedition in Computing, called Computational Modeling of Complex Systems, involving researchers from CMU, NYU, Cornell, University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland, Stony Brook University, and JPL. The primary goals of the workshop are to motivate students to consider fields in science, especially scientific research, and to train the students to use the methods developed in the program's research activities. The Expedition's research addresses four important societal problems: pancreatic cancer, atrial fibrillation, automotive safety, and aerospace safety.

Students from all CUNY colleges are invited to apply. They are admitted on the basis of grades and recommendations. The workshop staff includes researchers engaged in the ground-breaking research being done on the project. Also, each year, we invite distinguished visitors from various institutions to provide additional insights into the research problems. In recent years, special visitors included James Glimm from Stony Brook, Robert Gilmour from Cornell, Bud Mishra from NYU, James Faeder from Pittsburgh, and Flavio Fenton from Cornell.